Photo by Margaret Malandru
As the genre’s commercial fortunes dwindled in the ’90s, Healey took two musical paths—performing both the blues-rock that was his mainstream calling card with his Jeff Healey Band and recording and touring with Jeff Healey’s Jazz Wizards, whose music was gleaned from the classic blues and jazz 78s he collected and played on his weekly radio show on Toronto’s CIUT-FM.
Healey died on March 2, 2008, after a three-year battle with cancer, during which he continued to gig and record. Although posthumous live releases emerged, Heal My Soul is the first full-fledged studio release since Healey’s death. The new album’s dozen songs display Healey’s sheer firepower and range, from the incendiary opener “Daze of the Night” to the acoustic ballad “Baby Blue” to a cover of Richard Thompson’s poetic, lovelorn, “I Misunderstood.”